Of Bullets, Rain, Roses and Wanderings
by StarLight Massacre
Summary: A sad oneshot in which Harry is wistful and pessimistic as he looks at the decayed and decimated world he lives in and decides, in the end, it just isn't worth it. Character death, may be unsuitable for younger readers.


Title: Of Bullets, Rain, Roses and Wanderings.

Author: Starlight Massacre.

Rating: M.

Pairing: None.

Warnings: Graphic main character death. May be unsuitable for younger readers.

Of Bullets, Rain, Roses and Wanderings 

He couldn't do this, why did people assume he could save them? He couldn't! He was seventeen years old for pities sake! Voldemort had sixty years of experience over him! He didn't know where the Horcruxes were, he didn't know where the Hallows were, he didn't know how to defeat Voldemort and the Death Eaters out numbered him four hundred to one! If everyone was just sat on their asses waiting for him to defeat that many Death Eaters _and _Voldemort, they would be waiting a very, very long time!

The Order of the Phoenix was decimated, Sirius and Remus were dead, Ron had abandoned him and Dumbledore was holding onto the school by the skin of his teeth! The Ministry was a pile of dust and rubble, Hogsmeade was a wasteland, Azkaban was a Death Eater training camp and Diagon Ally was a smouldering wreck, what the hell was he supposed to do?! Snap his fingers and everything would fix itself and the Death Eaters and Voldemort would just drop dead?

Harry Potter sighed as he swung his legs over the battlements of the Astronomy Tower, a gentle breeze was playing with his hair and robes, in his right hand was a single black rose and his left hand was cradling his most precious item.

He had recently come into his inheritance, his seventeenth birthday to be precise, but he hadn't done what most other people would have done upon receiving so much money. He hadn't gone out and bought a new wardrobe or a personal library, he hadn't gotten piercings or tattoos, he hadn't bought his own manor house, car or shop, he didn't buy another familiar or a different wand and he hadn't gone out drinking his weight in alcohol.

He had bought just three simple things, a blood quill, two sheets of Will parchment and a 9mm Beretta 92 complete with a solid gold bullet engraved with 'HJP-1980-1997' that's right, he had bought a gun and an engraved bullet, because he was going to kill himself, today as a matter of fact. What else did he have to lose? He had lost his friends and family, the world he loved was completely destroyed and was on the verge of a dictatorship. Everyone he had known had called him selfish, so why couldn't he complete the act of utter selfishness and take his own life?

He wasn't as delusional as to think there was an afterlife in the clouds, behind golden gates where he, his parents and Sirius and Remus could talk and be together for eternity, that was just some pathetic lie adults told children who were afraid of death or too young to understand it. Or maybe he was just being pessimistic, but either way he was going to kill himself and never open his eyes again.

He would never again feel the wind caress his skin, nor the water or the grass. He would never smell the salt near the ocean, never hear the birds singing or be able to stand in the middle of a raging thunder storm again, but he found he didn't mind all that much, those were small reprieves from a greater evil. The air he loved inhaling so much was tainted with smoke, ash and the scent of rotting flesh and fire, the waters he loved looking at were stained crimson and the grass he once used to run his fingers through was nothing more than dry earth now. All he had loved was gone and soon so would he.

Harry twirled the rose through his slender fingers and sighed, he had written his will with the blood quill and left it on his made up bed. He didn't know why the house elves continued to make and wash his sheets when he hadn't spent a single night in them. He didn't sleep very well anymore, which was hardly surprising with all of the horrors he had seen in his short life.

What kind of sane person could see death, torture and rape and still be able to sleep at night? How deep of a demon did someone need to be to be able to witness a pre-teen girl being gang raped by Death Eaters and not be affected by it? Or to see a woman witnessing her Husband's death and her children's anguished, tortured screams as they were abused in front of her? The light leaving a man's eyes as he finally gave up his determination to live? The gruesome and horrific violations and murders of innocent toddlers? Not Harry, he had been affected deeply by every single event he had been forced to witness through his 'link' to Voldemort. His 'friends' kindly called him upset and troubled, but everyone else called him mentally unstable, which was probably closer to the mark.

Harry placed the rose to his button nose and inhaled the delicate, sweet fragrance. He smiled to himself, he might have been mentally unhinged, but he still had his love for the simple things. Such as a chilled glass of water on muggy days, the scent of a delicate flower, each pure drop of rain that fell and washed away filth from his body and the creatures that inhabited the same planet as him.

He closed his eyes and turned his head upwards, he was too delicate and fragile for such heavy things as war, too pure hearted to be tainted with the disease of murder, yet he had been forced head-first into this war that had been raging since before he was born and now he had the fate of wizarding Britain residing on his shoulders, he wasn't so arrogant as to believe the fate of the entire world resided on him, no matter what Professor Snape always said, he wasn't an arrogant person.

Curving his pretty, pink lips upwards into an innocent smile, his eyes still closed, Harry caressed his cheeks with the baby soft, rose petals. He estimated that someone must have found his Will by now, he had submitted one directly to Gringotts, they would be receiving their copy sometime soon as he had given the job to his beloved Hedwig. If he was right and someone had found his written Will, then that meant they would be looking for him to 'try and convince him out of killing himself' but he would be long gone by the time they found him. He would finally be free, because he refused to believe such an act as merely killing himself, it was symbolic to him, the act of freeing himself from his miserable existence.

They took him for granted, he watched them day after day, year upon year as they took the air in their lungs, the water in their goblets and the food on their plates for granted, but not him. After witnessing everyone around him taking these things for granted he knew they were taking him for granted, that he would take it upon himself to rid their world from darkness and disease, that he would lay down his life for theirs, too bad he didn't want to. He was going to complete his final act of selfishness and leave this world forever, to never come back. He wanted to die with whatever dignity and innocence he had left, and murdering someone, even if that someone was a terroristic, Dark Lord, would wipe out the remainder of his purity, for he was certain his virginity couldn't cover the cost of murder for his tainted, tattered soul.

Harry turned his head down to face the ground, some three hundred feet below him and opened his eyes at the sound of his name being shouted to the high heavens. All he could make out was a blob of black, one of lurid pink and purple, a handful of bright red and a bushy mass. Snape, Dumbledore, Weasleys and Hermione.

They were all scouting the area and shouting his name over and over, so they had found his Will and now the 'hunt' to find him was on. How quaint. Harry didn't know why they didn't just use their wands to locate him, surely that would be a must more practical way of searching for him than sifting through bushes and trees.

The coal haired man chuckled to himself and once again turned his gaze skyward. He run the rose over his mouth loving the feel of the smooth petals running over his silky lips. He puckered them slightly and placed a chaste kiss to the head of the rose and run his thumb over one of the thorns.

The breeze around him picked up slightly and ruffled his already windswept tresses, a single tear made its way down a smooth, pale cheek, coming to land softly on the petal of the black rose, that had been lowered in fear that the wind would snatch it away. Upon the wind was the scent of decimation, of blood and of burning. The deplorable fumes that still lingered over Hogsmeade, were being carried to him on the wind, giving him strength and a firm resolve to do what he had wanted to do for years.

Bringing the rose back up he sniffed its scent trying to rid the vile stench that had invaded his delicate nose, the heavy disease tainting the innocent air. So much taint, the world would never survive it, it would be better for Gaia to destroy those living upon her body and start over again, a blank canvass as it were.

Smiling again, Harry opened his eyes for his last look at the sky, looking at the blackening heavens Harry felt a chuckle escape him, a thunderstorm was brewing, how coincidental, yet utterly fitting. Caressing his entire face with velvety rose, he savoured the feel of it against his peachy skin. Using the distraction of the rose to keep his mind and senses otherwise occupied, Harry lifted his left hand and shifted its precious bundle to point the barrel of his weapon upwards at the vulnerable and fleshy juncture between his neck and chin, the trigger facing outwards, with a relaxed, pale finger curled around it.

Down on the ground he heard his name being shouted in earnest, they still hadn't thought to use their wands, the scent of the rose was still wafting through his senses and the first few drops of cleansing rain landed softly on his face and slid down his neck, Harry saw the flash of lightning and thirty-five seconds later heard the roll of thunder.

"Are you angry at me Gaia, or at everyone else?" Harry whispered in a mellifluous voice belying his pain and anguish.

The next flash of lightning was accompanied by two claps of thunder, the second only marginally quieter than the first.

Harry smiled, Gaia wasn't angry at him, but at the people whom had made him feel that he had to take his own life to gain freedom.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way, I do not wish to stain your body with any more precious blood, but there is no other way for me to find peace, all I want is for the pain and suffering of my mind and body put to rest, so my soul may finally loose its vile taint." Harry whispered sadly, closing his eyes against the downpour of rain and with the vicious gusts of wind blowing his hair and robes into disarray, the rain pelting unyieldingly upon his emaciated frame and the black rose still pressed against his nose, Harry tautened his left index finger and fired the golden bullet through his neck, mouth and into his brain. The shot killed him instantly upon impact and his body fell to his right off of the battlements and onto the cold, stone floor of the Astronomy Tower, his blood seeping from his head and neck, blossoming across the stone like a flower in the sunlight, the unrelenting rain diluting the once, precious liquid.

* * *

The gunshot had rung out clear over the gap between thunder claps and the soaking wet 'hunters' on the ground heard it loud and clear. They looked to the Astronomy Tower, the origin of the peculiar sound, before Hermione Granger's body choked up with sobs.

"Harry how could you?!" She repeated over and over again and at her words the storm got worse. The lightning struck the ground and surrounding trees, setting them aflame and the thunder roaring its displeasure, drowning out all other sound.

"Pull yourself together Granger! What happened? What did that noise mean to you?!" Snape barked out impatiently, inbetween the thunder.

"It…it was a gunshot, I've only ever heard them on TV but the sound was unmistakable!" The girl wailed.

Severus paled, Lily had once told him about Muggle weaponry, apparently guns were the most lethal.

He took off running, aware that the group were following him, he cursed as a stitch bloomed in his side and the oxygen he was inhaling wasn't enough to feed his starved body, but still he didn't stop running and neither did his companions. They inadvertently caught Minerva's attention as they barged past her, they ran all the way up to the Astronomy Tower and when he burst through the door, he stopped dead. There laying innocently upon the soaking wet stone, was the body of Harry James Potter, a strange, metal contraption he assumed was the gun, was clutched in his left hand and in his right hand, that was nearest the door he was standing in, was a bloodstained black rose.

Potter's emerald eyes were closed, a sweet smile was on his lips and Severus would have believed that the boy was sleeping, if it wasn't for the fact that the entire of the back of Potter's head was missing.

Spinning around the stoic man caught the Weasley girl and Granger before they could barge past him and see the nauseating scene behind the door and dragged them kicking and screaming away from the Tower. He heard Minerva's scream of grief when he was halfway down the winding stairs.

The man grit his teeth and dragged the two wailing girls harder, the lead weight that had settled in his stomach since he had read Potter's Will was now nearly crushing his heart. How could the boy have done something like that?! Why had they been so blind to his depression? For surely the boy was depressed if he could kill himself!

Growling Snape threw the two girls in his arms at the stunned looking Poppy and barked at the woman to give them calming and sleeping draughts. Sitting on a bed, he watched as the nurse used every threat at her disposal to get the two girls to drink the liquids. Severus sighed heavily through gritted teeth and pulled out Potter's Will, they didn't need to verify it, the blood quill had been laying on top of the parchment and he read again the last thing Potter had ever wrote or would ever write again.

'To whom it may concern,

Being of sound mind and body, I Harry James Potter do hereby declare this my last will and testament.

If you are reading this then it is safe to say I am dead by my own hand and you will find my body in my favourite haunt. I was neither happy nor pleased with my life and therefore decided to take it, it may have been selfish, but I do not care and nor do I mind that my short life is at an end. To be honest I will be glad it is over and I look forward to the reprieve of eternal death where the taint and vileness of the living can not reach me.

You all took me for granted, assuming I was happy because I was the 'chosen one' and that because I had piles of gold and limitless fame I was content, I was neither, I wanted a taintless and peaceful life yet neither were granted to me, I was thrust into a war that had been raging before I was even conceived, I never had a chance of winning and deep down you all knew that, yet you continued to use me as a shield against Voldemort, whilst urging me to commit an act of illegality, you wanted me to _murder_ someone, a heinous act that I would never have committed nor consented to. You wished for me to loose, to sacrifice, my last shred of innocence for your lives, you would have gladly watched me die for you and forgotten about me later.

I have been watching all of you for years, how you interact, how you act and react in different situations and I watch as you take every luxury and comfort for granted, every gulp of water, every forkful of food and every breath you greedily suckle down, not giving a second thought about it, taking it for granted because it has 'always been there' for you.

You have never been denied such comforts, you have never been denied food nor water for days on end, you have never been locked up because the people who are supposed to care for you got fed up of looking at you, you have never felt the harsh crack of a belt or whip as it gouges out strips of your flesh for an outlandish and unjust punishment, you have never been denied a shelter over your head because you have people whom unconditionally love you, yet safely cocooned in your bubble of love you never realise that there are people around you whom may not be as fortunate. It must be a mistake in the human genetic make-up because no one ever realises until it is too late to do anything about it!

The concept of abuse never passes through anyone's minds even when the signs are glaringly obvious, I was a prime example of this. Where do you think the bruises, cuts and broken bones came from? If it had just been a simple 'boyish, fistfight' why didn't anyone ever question why my 'caring, loving and faultless' relatives never took me to a hospital to have them fixed? Or is it because I am the 'chosen one' I should instinctively know wandless healing charms? The first time I had ever seen the inside of a hospital was when the Weasleys took me to St Mungos to see Arthur, I believe I was fifteen at the time.

As for my inheritance and estate, I bequeath it equally to several people.

Firstly to Severus Snape, whom may have been a snarky git, but never treated me like royalty or porcelain, for which I was always thankful. Use the money for what ever you want, rare and obscure potions ingredients if I know you half as well as I hope, though I do suggest you spend a portion of it on soap and shampoo, you'd be quite a looker if you washed once in a while.

Secondly to Luna Lovegood, whom always knew how to cheer me up and never had any delusions as to who I was, what my life was actually like or what I wanted out of it. I will miss you my sweet little Luna, watch over the Nargles for me and make sure the Wrackspurts don't bite.

Thirdly to Mr Amos Diggory, money is a poor consolation for the loss of a child, but I hope it may serve to give you and your Wife a new start so you may look upon the memory of Cedric with remembrance and not mourn for him and only think of the loss you have suffered so tragically.

Fourthly to the Creatures United Front, may you continue all of your hard work to include supposedly 'dark' creatures into everyday society, I strongly believe in what you are working to achieve and I hope my offer is enough for you to carry on with until you receive more donations for your noble cause.

Fifth and finally to the goblins at Gringotts bank whom are seriously underestimated and also taken for granted, wizards would be lost without goblins running the financial system, yet, like so many other things, they do not realise it. Give my regards to Griphook, the goblin whom escorted a starry-eyed eleven year old on his first trip into the underground caverns of Gringotts bank and made it a very enjoyable trip.

So now I leave you all to the mess of the war and my dead body, do what you want with it, I honestly do not care, I am leaving this sorry excuse of an existence and I'm not ever coming back, for which I am thankful. I was too naïve for war and fighting, I would never had survived and in my own selfish way I am glad it will no longer be my problem to deal with and I believe you should all be ashamed of yourselves for trying to shove the insurmountable pressure of a war upon the shoulders of a single teenaged boy, who can not even consider harming an insect let alone another human being, no matter whom they are or what they have done.

Farewell and fondest regards,

Harry James Potter.

Snape threw the piece of Will parchment away from him as his throat clogged with emotion, Potter's will had really opened his eyes, he had been blinded by rage and a twenty year grudge against a dead man, he had seen the bruising and the broken bones, yet instead of questioning why Potter was carrying around such injuries he had mentally applauded whom ever had given him them! The thought made him sick to his stomach and now would forever be another heavy stain against his already liberally tarnished conscience, especially as the boy had left him a fifth of his estates and legacy, that would be enough money to see him through several lifetimes, for he would not dishonour the boy by not accepting the offering bequeathed to him.

Laying back on the bed he was on, Severus groped around in his robe and pulled out a vial of Dreamless Sleep potion and downed the thick liquid, he needed the sleep, he was drained from today and he would need all his energy to see tomorrow through. That was Severus Snape's last thought before he slipped into sleep, not troubled by the raging storm outside that was lashing against the roof and windows of the ancient castle, nor by the group of people rushing through the castle corridors, disbelief painted upon their faces as they reached the Astronomy Tower, to the place that Harry James Potter's body lay, unfeeling, unthinking and, most importantly, untroubled on the stone floor, pure rain water and lifeless blood flowing from and around him, seeping into his heavy robes and staining his chalk-white skin, yet even as all of this went on around the body of the dead man, he never realeased his dead grip upon the rose and the sweet little smile never left his pretty, little lips.

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A/N: Just a little plot that came to me this morning and wouldn't leave me alone. I hope you all enjoyed it. StarLight Massacre X


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